Common Ground in First Language and Intercultural Interaction

The purpose of this article is to detail the properties of core communication theories, particularly communication accommodation theory (CAT), thus demonstrating its utility in explaining intercultural communication (Giles, 1973, 2016; Giles et al., 1991). A key position of this manuscript is that CAT, with its unique intercultural origin and substantive interpersonal and intergroup features, intersects with prominent theories in intercultural communication research (Gallois et al., 1995; Giles et al., 1991; Zhang & Giles, 2018). As such, part one of this article summarizes the growth and expansion of CAT as a robust theory of communication. In part two, we identify CAT’s intersections with prominent intercultural communication frameworks in relational and intergroup processes. Future opportunities for converging and building new frameworks, particularly focusing on expectation violations theory (EVT; Burgoon, 2016) and CAT, are explained in the final section. Overall, the paper coalesces CAT’s development phases and pertinent communication theorizing across intercultural research in communication to accomplish these goals.

This paper investigates intercultural communication and its significance to higher education. The paper briefly discusses culture, subculture and the meeting of cultures. It also provides a brief survey of developments in intercultural communication research. With reference to New Zealand, the paper further points to some limitations of intercultural communication theories, but meanwhile acknowledges the significance of these theories to higher education. The author argues that adopting interculturalism based on the principles of equality and respect at the national and institutional levels is more crucial than merely mastering some intercultural competencies or applying some intercultural communication models outlined in intercultural communication theories.

This chapter argues that the main difference between intracultural and intercultural communication is that the latter, to some extent, shifts the emphasis from the communal to the individual. What standard pragmatics assumes about how things work in communication depends on there being commonalities, conventions, standards, and norms between speakers and hearers. This, however, may not be exactly so in intercultural communication. Commonalities, conventions, common beliefs, norms, shared knowledge, and the like, all create a core common ground on which intention and cooperation-based pragmatics is built. (Of course, there are plenty of varieties within those commonalities.) However, when this core common ground appears to be limited, as is the case in intercultural communication, interlocutors cannot take it for granted; rather they need to co-construct it, at least temporarily. So what is happening here is a shift in emphasis from the communal to the individual. It is not that the individual becomes more important than the societal. Rather, since there is limited common ground, it should be created in the interactional context in which the interlocutors function as core common ground creators rather than just common ground seekers and activators as is the case in intracultural communication.

The aim of the proposed research is to analyze the dimensions and forms of intercultural communication among figures of musical and theatrical culture within the modern Ukrainian emigration and diaspora, amidst the crisis conditions of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The focus of this analysis is the creative activity of performers (instrumentalists, vocalists, conductors) – both soloists and ensembles ‑ who play key roles in the process of international communication. The primary timeframe is 2014–2024, covering the various phases of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The study emphasizes terminological aspects of concepts such as “communication”, “culture”, “intercultural communication”, “emigration”, and “refugees”, highlighting their use in contemporary academic discourse. Special attention is given to the strategies and means not only for preserving the national identity of Ukrainian refugees through culture and the arts but also for fostering their intercultural interaction in host countries. In findings, it is emphasized that the Russian-Ukrainian war, even since its hybrid stage from 2014, has resulted in the mass emigration of millions of Ukrainians, marking a new wave of emigration, but artistic professionals in host countries not only preserve their national identity and represent the achievements of Ukrainian culture but also engage in intercultural interaction. Key forms of such interaction include thematic concerts, festivals, theatrical productions, international academic conferences, and collaborative publications.

Much of intercultural communication research and training has rested on the presumption that the key to intercultural communication and understanding is knowledge and skills in the relevant language and culture. In this paper, we argue that what is missing from this perspective is, crucially, power relations and the willpower to overcome them. Proceeding from this ethical and political stance, we suggest that research, education and training take on the role of institutional moral agents and turn their attention to critiquing power practices on the one hand and cultivating the ethical motivation to construct common goals on the other. As empirical illustrations of research, we examine, firstly, how intercultural '(mis)understandings' are utilised to suit political and economic interests and, secondly, what members themselves feel to be the cause of failures in intercultural communication. In conclusion, we discuss some implications for pedagogy.

In her fictional narrative Bir Gün, Gece, the Turkish writer Mine G. Kırıkkanat depicts the consequences of a devastating earthquake which happens in İstanbul, followed by another in İzmit. The crisis immediately becomes an international disaster issue with the involvement of international aid providers. In such a crisis scenario in which effective communication is crucial, the main characters of the narrative act both as intercultural speakers and crisis sojourners. They need to have intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as well as crisis communication competencies for coping with the disaster. Therefore, intercultural crisis communication, which combines the fields of intercultural communication and crisis communication, should be studied in order to understand the intercultural communication processes in the best way. However, there is a lack of studies which focus on the ICC aspect of intercultural crisis communication. In order to contribute to filling this gap, this paper integrates thematic analysis with critical discourse analysis to provide an interpretation of the novel Bir Gün, Gece from the perspective of ICC. The study reveals that the most effective communicative practices of ICC displayed in the face to face intercultural interactions of the main characters in the novel are related to the knowledge, skills and critical cultural awareness dimensions. Moreover, the mostly addressed competencies of intercultural crisis communication which contribute to ICC appear to be language proficiency and managing conflict. It is suggested that intercultural crisis communication should be investigated more in terms of its crucial dimension of ICC.

This investigation identifies contextual characteristics associated with meaningful intercultural interactions between domestic students enrolled in a 13-week intercultural communication course and international students. After participating in an international student welcome and games event and three cultural encounters, domestic students completed post-activity reflection surveys that included a quality intercultural interaction scale and open-ended contextual questions. This mixed-method, convergent design approach employed factor analysis to assess the quantitative scale and utilized process and magnitude coding procedures for the qualitative data. Results suggest that meaningful intercultural interactions tend to occur when students have the opportunity to discover commonalities and experience cultural exchanges during unforced, natural, and enjoyable initial encounters. Additionally, self-disclosure, cultural learning, and personal growth characterize meaningful intercultural encounters with longer duration. These findings provide several recommendations for universities, administrators, and educators seeking to facilitate meaningful initial interactions and prolonged encounters between domestic and international students. This study also offers theoretical implications regarding intercultural relationship development and the role that domestic students play in creating a receptive host environment. Finally, this research introduces a newly developed quality intercultural interaction instrument that international educators can use to evaluate, compare, and enhance intercultural learning interventions.

In today’s business environment, digital transformation is significantly reshaping the way organizations communicate, both internally among teams and externally with partners, clients, and the global market. The rapid advancement of new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), automated communication platforms, social media, and data analytics tools, enables faster and more efficient business communication but also introduces new challenges. One of the key trends in digital business communication is the shift from traditional forms of information exchange toward collaborative, interactive, and personalized models. Companies are increasingly utilizing digital ecosystems such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other integrated platforms that facilitate remote teamwork. Simultaneously, the use of artificial intelligence in communication—through chatbots, generative AI assistants, and automated data analyses—is enhancing customer experience and enabling data-driven decision-making. However, while digitalization improves business processes, it also presents challenges in intercultural communication. In a globalized business world, working with teams and clients from diverse cultural backgrounds requires an understanding of specific communication norms, styles, and expectations. Digital channels often diminish non-verbal cues and contextual elements that are crucial in intercultural interaction, potentially leading to misunderstandings, reduced team efficiency, and difficulties in negotiation. A particular challenge lies in balancing formal and informal communication in digital spaces, as different cultures have varying preferences regarding hierarchy, tone, and forms of address in business communication. For instance, while Anglo-Saxon business cultures often emphasize directness and efficiency, Asian cultures may favor more indirect and contextually rich ways of expression. The aim of this paper is to provide insights into current trends in digital business communication, analyze key challenges in intercultural interaction, and propose strategies for enhancing communication in a dynamic business environment. Through an analysis of contemporary technologies, practical examples, and concrete tools, the paper offers guidelines for optimizing business communication in the digital age, with special emphasis on developing intercultural competencies as a key success factor in global business.

The rapid development of digital platforms has transformed patterns of consumption in modern society, particularly among younger generations. Digital platforms function not only as spaces for information exchange, but also as media for the dissemination of popular culture and intercultural communication that shape consumerist attitudes. This study aims to analyze consumerism as a form of popular culture and as an intercultural communication practice on digital platforms in Indonesia. This research employs a qualitative descriptive approach using content analysis and non-participant digital observation of social media content, promotional materials, and visual narratives circulating on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and e-commerce sites. The findings indicate that digital platforms play a significant role in constructing symbolic consumption, in which products are no longer consumed solely based on their functional value, but also as representations of identity, social status, and lifestyle. Popular culture, reinforced by the role of influencers, social media algorithms, and global cultural flows, encourages consumerist behavior, impulse buying, and the normalization of hedonistic lifestyles. Intercultural communication processes further facilitate the dissemination of global values that negotiate with local cultures, thereby shaping dynamic consumption patterns. This study concludes that consumerist attitudes in digital spaces constitute a socio-cultural phenomenon constructed through media representations, intercultural interactions, and the dynamics of digital capitalism. Therefore, enhancing media literacy and critical awareness is essential to promote more rational and responsible consumption practices.

This chapter introduces intercultural pragmatics, offering a new perspective on communicative processes from a sociocognitive angle. The sociocognitive approach (SCA) defines interculturality as a phenomenon that is not only interactionally constructed but also relies on cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong. Interculturality is a situationally emergent phenomenon that relies both on relatively fixed cultural norms and models as well as situationally evolving features. Norms and models brought into the interaction from prior experience blend with features created ad hoc in the interaction in a synergetic way and the result is intercultural discourse. The second part of the chapter presents the sociocognitive approach to communication and explains the relationship between intracultural and intercultural communication within that paradigm. In SCA there is no pure intracultural or intercultural communication because the relationship between the two is considered a continuum with two hypothetical ends. Every concrete communicative event or process can be placed somewhere on the continuum, closer to one of the ends or somewhere in the middle. The last part of the chapter focuses on the application of SCA in analysing intercultural interactions where emphasis is on discourse segments rather than utterances.

This paper is organised around a number of episodes in intercultural communication in which there is some degree of mismatch between the intentions and interpretations of the interlocutors. Three concepts are used to illuminate the nature of these mismatches: the concept of common ground, the principle of indexicality and the concept of cultural models. The episodes serve to illustrate how intercultural communication is facilitated by four levels of cultural awareness: a level of general awareness of how common ground, indexing conventions and cultural models may differ between members of different communities; a level of detailed awareness of the common ground, indexing conventions and cultural models of members of a particular community; an awareness of areas of communication in which differences often exist and mismatches may occur; and an overarching level of meta-awareness, which makes a speaker aware of the limitations of the first three levels and points to the need for creative inference and negotiation in specific situations.

The purpose of the article is to provide theoretical substantiation and development of a model for teaching students of Ukrainian higher education institutions in other language communicative negotiation skills. The methodology involves the comprehensive use of general-scientific philosophical and cultural approaches to the realization of the purpose of scientific intelligence and a set of methods of linguistics, pedagogy and cultural studies. This research is performed in the framework of the integration approach to the communication process, from which the success of communication is largely determined by the awareness of the linguistic, cultural and communicative-communicative features of communicants that are manifested in strategies (methods) for achieving practical goals. The scientific novelty of the obtained results consists in considering the formation of professional communication skills in a foreign language as a conglomerate of professional communication, the identification and description of linguistic, stylistic, sociocultural, communicative and behavioral characteristics of the negotiations, as well as the further development of a phased model for students of non-philological specialties, to carry out an effective process of intercultural communication. Conclusions. Mastering intercultural, professionally meaningful communication involves the learning of professional concepts, socio-cultural values and communicative norms of the foreign cultural community as intercultural interaction, and, first of all, in international negotiations, the role of awareness of their own culture and cultural specificity of the partner, as well as the degree of readiness adequately, from the standpoint of ethnic-liberalism, perceive the professional culture of another community. The main components of the content of learning the skills of constructing a communicative process in a foreign language are: structural organization of communication; meta-communication tools, secured at each stage of communication; strategies and tactics of the communication process at each stage of its implementation; communicative acts, most typical for the negotiation process; style of communication, taking into account non-cultural specifics for the preparation and successful implementation of a communicative act.

This experiential activity invites students to investigate the mental, affective, and behavioral effects of personal investment and authenticity during intercultural conversation. We invite students to create intercultural interactions through engaging in un/familiar conversational subject matter to simulate the sensations of navigating cultural unfamiliarity. In our test runs of this activity, we explored how common ground is generated and extended when a participant navigates unfamiliar conversational terrain. We share student discoveries about their perceived affordances and connect their experiences to Cultural Intelligence (CQ) development. These results may inform future learning activities to develop intercultural competence through embodied attunement. Courses Interpersonal Communication, Intercultural Communication, Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, Leadership and Ethics, Civil Discourse, Nonverbal Communication. Objectives Through this assignment, students will (1) investigate mental, affective, and behavioral adaptive effects during intercultural conversations; (2) articulate embodied responses and practice navigating discomfort in un/familiar terrain; (3) identify aspects that generate and extend common ground or create disengagement in intercultural conversations; (4) explore adjusting conversational rhythms to improve topical understanding; and (5) practice approaches that allow partners to engage more fully.

This chapter explores the implications of the research for leadership, workplace communication, and intercultural pragmatics. The analyses throughout the book indicate a number of areas of potential miscommunication and unintentional offense in intercultural interaction. The chapter examines some of the sociopragmatic implications of these insights for those working in intercultural contexts, whether as researchers, as employers and employees, or as colleagues. The book has conclusions regarding intercultural and cross-cultural communication from three perspectives: first, in terms of developing exible methodologies; second, in relation to the specific ways in which leaders attended to different dimensions of leadership performance in different workplace contexts; and, third, in terms of what was learned from Pākehā employees working as minority group members in Māori communities of practice.

Intercultural communication and translation seem to have enjoyed increasing attention in the last decade. The growing interest, however, was not generated by any new phenomena since direct and mediated forms of communication between people of different mother tongues and from various cultural groups have existed for many centuries as a fact of life. Based on certain selected examples of proverbs, idiomatic expressions, realia, movie titles, body language, and slang translated from English into Polish, this paper aims to show how translation and culture are inextricably intertwined and to examine and highlight the significant role the translator plays in facilitating intercultural interaction and understanding. The discussion will clearly illustrate translation pitfalls and emphasize the importance of gaining some knowledge about the culture one attempts to communicate with. The study will analyse how the translator, as an intercultural mediator, systematizes and generalizes the process of translation. The translator’s job does not consist solely in finding equivalent words in the target language. In fact, the most accurate translations will take into account many factors: intercultural differences, linguistic subtleties, language evolution and origin, as demonstrated by phrases such as proverbs, idiomatic expressions, proper nouns, etc. Various cultural influences will remain untranslatable and pose a serious challenge to any translator, sometimes inadvertently leading to incomprehension or misunderstanding at best or unintentional insult at worst. Therefore, the need to acquire knowledge about other cultures, their history and heritage remains crucial. A competent translator should apply sundry techniques that would help him avoid mistakes and efficiently handle intercultural dissimilarities. Research into the lexical content and syntax of the target language along with its ideologies or value systems represents just one of the many strategies applied with a view to resolving difficulties that accompany intercultural translation. Translation, i.e. transposition of ideas expressed in one language by one social group into appropriate expressions of another group, entails a process of cultural decoding, re-coding and en-coding. As cultures increasingly come into closer contact, multicultural considerations are brought to bear to an ever greater degree. The purpose of this paper is to prove that intercultural interaction represents an important aspect of translation, a process that goes beyond transferring the sheer meaning of words from one language into another. The study of the complexity of both the translation and intercultural communication requires an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, and by building on shared commonalities and differences in the focus, methods, and concepts, both Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication Studies can successfully develop as independent disciplines.